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Cornugaya Directory 02
Reflecting in such random fashion, and strolling with no greater
method, I worked my way back through Cheapside and found myself once
more in front of Sweeting's window. Again the turtles attracted me.
They were alive, and so far at any rate they agreed with me. Nay,
they had eyes, mouths, legs, if not arms, and feet, so there was
much in which we were both of a mind, but surely they must be
mistaken in arming themselves so very heavily. Any creature on
getting what the turtle aimed at would overreach itself and be
landed not in safety but annihilation. It should have no communion
with the outside world at all, for death could creep in wherever the
creature could creep out; and it must creep out somewhere if it was
to hook on to outside things. What death can be more absolute than
such absolute isolation? Perfect death, indeed, if it were
attainable (which it is not), is as near perfect security as we can
reach, but it is not the kind of security aimed at by any animal
that is at the pains of defending itself. For such want to have
things both ways, desiring the livingness of life without its
perils, and the safety of death without its deadness, and some of us
do actually get this for a considerable time, but we do not get it
by plating ourselves with armour as the turtle does. We tried this
in the Middle Ages, and no longer mock ourselves with the weight of
armour that our forefathers carried in battle. Indeed the more
deadly the weapons of attack become the more we go into the fight
slug-wise.
Except in the pairing time, the old males usually live by themselves.
The old females and the immature males, on the other hand, are often
met with in twos and threes; and the former occasionally have young
with them, though the pregnant females usually separate themselves,
and sometimes remain apart after they have given birth to their
offspring. The young Orangs seem to remain unusually long under their
mother's protection, probably in consequence of their slow growth.
While climbing the mother always carries her young against her bosom,
the young holding on by the mother's hair. At what time of life the
Orang-Utan becomes capable of propagation, and how long the females go
with young is unknown, but it is probable that they are not adult
until they arrive at ten or fifteen years of age. A female which lived
for five years at Batavia had not attained one-third the height of the
wild females. It is probable that, after reaching adult years, they go
on growing, though slowly, and that they live to forty or fifty years.
The Dyaks tell of old Orangs which have not only lost all their
teeth, but which find it so troublesome to climb that they maintain
themselves on windfalls and juicy herbage.
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